


Like Blue

by somethingsomething



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 01:47:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2795300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingsomething/pseuds/somethingsomething
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after Pitfall finds Stacker sitting on a bench in the snow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ienablu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ienablu/gifts).



> Happy Holidays!

Stacker remembers an evening in late July – after the finality of never piloting again had sunk in, but before the reality that he was going to be a parent hit him – when Caitlin Lightcap came to his bunk with two beers. The bottles were already sweating in the heat.

Halfway through their drinks, Caitlin had stared at the wall.

“Late at night, when you can’t sleep because your brain keeps reaching for memories it doesn’t have, and your bones ache with pains that aren’t yours, and you think about Scott and Herc –”

She takes a breath that seems to fill every space in her body before letting it out. “Do you think that maybe it’s too much?”

Stacker takes his turn at studying the wall. Like a movie on a projector screen, an image of Mako in a blue coat – blue like hope, like the sky, not blue like Kaiju – and holding a red shoe shiny despite the ash pops up before him.

“Maybe,” he says. “But I don’t think any other option would have been worth it.”

 

A few years and a lifetime later, Stacker sits on a park bench. The snow has been swept off the path, but it stretches out flat and white past that. Memories play out across the snowy ground.

Chuck finds him sometime in the late morning and sits down, Chuck settling close enough that their arms brush. Max puts his head on Chuck’s knee, and he lets him up.

“Still spoiling him?” Stacker says with a smile.

Chuck snorts. “‘S too cold for him to have to sit on the ground if he doesn’t have to.”

Stacker hums.

Chuck snorts again, but Stacker catches a smile out of the corner of his eye as Chuck bends his head closer to Max.

Stacker smiles and settles deeper into his coat.

Stacker’s fingers are starting to feel numb around the edges, even in their gloves, when Chuck rolls his left shoulder. Stacker’s muscles twinge in response; he used to do the same after drops. Jaeger tech was clunkier back then, prone to uneven weight. He and Tamsin used to joke that it was because she wasn’t pulling her weight in the CONN-POD.

“How long?” Stacker asks.

Chuck looks over with a raised eyebrow.

“Your shoulder,” Stacker says. “How long has it been hurting?”

Chuck looks back over the snow. “Since last January. Started noticing it when the choppers picked us up out of the water.”

“Have you seen someone about it?”

Chuck shrugs. “It’s all in my head. Wasn’t anything they could do for it. Turns out you and I Drifted a little too fine.” He looks at Stacker out of the corner of his eye.

Stacker raises his shoulders until his coat collar brushes against his ears. He sighs and his breath hangs in the air before it cools and disappears. “I keep waking up to take the dog out before I remember that I’ve always liked cats. I was on my third piece of vegemite toast yesterday before the smell hit me. I could barely see the bread beneath the vegemite, I’d spread it so thick,” he says, smiling and looking at Chuck.

Chuck grins back. “Vegemite,” he says, “is fantastic. Sustainable too, with recycling the yeast from breweries.”

Stacker pulls a face. “To each their own,” he says, looking back out over the snow.

Chuck laughs once deep in his chest, and it’s a departure from the harsh scoffs from the past few years. He settles further against the bench.

“Dad’s been…happier,” he says after a minute.

Stacker looks at Chuck. “You didn’t come out here in the cold to give me a shovel talk, did you?” he asks, smiling a little.

Chuck snorts. “No.” He squirms in his seat and says, “Just. I’m glad you’re both happy. That’s all.” He frowns at the snow.

“Thank you, Chuck,” Stacker says.

Chuck looks at Stacker with eyes a little wider, like he still doesn’t know how to verbalize his feelings, much less have someone _thank_ him for his honesty. In all likelihood, Stacker thinks, he probably doesn’t.

So Stacker lets it go and says, “I saw Mako last week when I was in Hong Kong.”

“Yeah?” Chuck says, the panic leaving his face to be replaced with confusion.

Stacker leans back against the bench as calm as the falling snow. “We met for breakfast before her interview with Naomi Sokolov.”

Stacker waits for Chuck’s confusion to edge into skepticism before he says, “She still had on that old jersey from when the two of you played football for the Academy. Hers was a few sizes too large. She must have slept in it since our PR team was taking care of wardrobe.”

Stacker doesn’t bother to try and hide his delight as Chuck’s face turns a red much darker than his hair.

“That’s. That’s probably from before, and she probably stole it, and–”

Stacker lets Chuck continue to stammer before he finally laughs and says, “Easy, Ranger. What you and Mako do is your private business. I couldn’t resist.”

Chuck makes a face. “Wish I could say the same about you and Dad,” he says, and Stacker can’t help laughing.

“Your sympathy means a lot,” Chuck drawls when Stacker can finally breathe enough to wipe a tear from his eye.

“Sorry,” Stacker says, not feeling very sorry, “but I’d nearly forgotten about that particular hazard of Drifting.”

Chuck rolls his eyes. “I’m glad one of us has,” he says, but he’s smiling, so Stacker smiles back.

The snow falls soft against the ground and Max snorts as he burrows further under Chuck’s arm.

“How much longer do you think all this media circus is going to last?” Chuck finally asks.

Stacker heaves a breath and the cold air singes his lungs. “Until they get bored, I supposed. The world wants to move on, rebuild. Part of that means that they’ll want to forget. No one likes living in the past.” The problem with being a Jaeger pilot was that the past came up in every Drift. Half of it wasn’t even yours.

Chuck sighs. “This part doesn’t seem worth it. Part of me still doesn’t believe that we made it.”

Stacker blinks and it’s summer and Caitlin sits next to him, bone weary and holding a bottle of bear. He blinks again and he’s back in the cold with Chuck, who’s looking off into the distance. Part of Stacker thinks that this is the most thoughtful Chuck has ever looked. The part that still remembers how to think like Chuck knows it is.

“There were a lot of other options on the table when we were putting the Jaeger program together. Some things that might have worked better, some things that might not have.” Stacker says. He looks up at the sky. The clouds are gray and heavy with more snow, but past that, the sky will be blue. "But for all that we lost when we chose this path-"

"We've gained, too," Chuck says. "And that's what makes it worth it."

Stacker looks at Chuck in surprise.

"I've been in your head," Chuck says, smiling.

Stacker laughs. Chuck will be just fine.

“Come on,” he says, standing and shaking off the snow. “I don’t think you’ve ever been shown how the pros did jaeger bombs back in the glory days.”

Chuck rolls his eyes at “back in the glory days” and the pride and nostalgia Stacker says it with, but follows after all the same.


End file.
